Somehow, the forests in which the two groups live were not felled. Historians credit this slip of fate to the Caura’s remoteness, and to the country’s overwhelming dependence on a different natural resource: oil. Projects to dam rivers were drawn up, then forgotten. Scientific research stations in the forest lie abandoned.

Foreign missionaries and anthropologists, once plentiful here, are now rarely seen. President Hugo Chávez expelled American proselytizers this decade, accusing them of espionage. For reasons not entirely clear, his government rarely grants permits to experts from abroad to conduct research in the Cau

In an original and informative essay for the catalog of "Braque: The Late Works," Sophie Bowness notes that Braque told John Richardson in 1957 that the French poets have been particularly helpful at adding to the general obscurity of art. The obscurity, suggestion, mystery, and metamorphosis Braque sought in his painting were all for him associated with poetry, and Bowness concentrates on the four contemporary major literary figures she sees as being most relevant to Braque's art. The poet Pierre Reverdy was the oldest and closest of his friends; it was partly through Reverdy that Braque learned to express his own thoughts in condensed aphorisms. Also influential were the writers Jean Paulhan and Francis Ponge. In 1945 Ponge had been taken to Braque's studio by Paulhan, who had known Braque for many years, and Ponge considered the visit to be one of the highlights of his life.

It was with Paulhan and Laurens that Braque was able to converse most freely on matters both aesthetic and personal. Braque gave Paulhan a painting of 1942, The Black Fish, which Paulhan treasured. Braque was to inspire some of Ponge's poetry, and he collaborated with Ponge on the prose-poem "Cinque Sapates" of 1950, contributing five illustrations to go with Ponge's deceptively simple, evocative, and magical language. René Char, another younger friend, wrote sensitively and empathetically on Braque and like Ponge accepted him as a mentor. The last and most important collaboration between Char and Braque, Lettera Amorosa, was published in 1963, just before Braque's death. Yet despite his insistence on "poetry," Braque used the word generically, and always asserted his allegiance to painting's autonomy.

In the opening months of the Korean War, the South Korean military and the police executed at least 4,900 civilians who had earlier signed up — often under force — for re-education classes meant to turn them against Communism, the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced Thursday.

For all the talk of a new era of Indo-American collaboration, Americans tend to view India through the narrow prisms of two shared concerns — a battle against Islamic extremists, and the benefits of international trade. But India is a complicated country in a complex part of the world — buffeted by internal insurgencies, surrounded by hostile neighbors, marginalized until recently as underdeveloped.

The article in Outlook comes less than two weeks after Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting China’s network of secret jails — a report that prompted a Foreign Ministry spokesman to deny their existence. “There are no black jails in China,” Qin Gang, the spokesman, said when asked about the report. “If citizens have complaints and suggestions about government work, they can convey them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and normal channels.”

Given the government’s tight control of the media, human rights advocates expressed guarded optimism that the article might signal a shift away from official tolerance for the jails, which are thought to have existed since 2005.